craftgrrl | A Knitting Conundrum (sort of)

I generally tend to think of myself as pretty darn good at knitting. However, when I'm doing the first line, I tend to end up pulling the string too tightly and as such it ends up looking slightly warped and curved at one end.

So... if I were to start all projects on a slightly larger size of needle than I intend to use and then knitting onto smaller needles, would that work as a method of keeping things proportional? Or is that insane? Just knitting the first line on a larger needle?

If that does sound a bit rubbish, does anyone else have the same problem?

Any replies would be rad, thanks.